MarkBook Transfer Screen

    MarkBook^®     section 10-8

Transfer Marks and Comments to an external Electronic Report Card

MarkBook will assist in building the comments for an Electronic Report Card and transferring these comments to software which constructs the report - FileMaker® Pro in this screen example. Any teacher using MarkBook will spend minimal time entering meaningful data into electronic reports.

To achieve this transfer, both MarkBook and FileMaker® Pro (as an example) must run simultaneously on your screen. Windows permits this. MarkBook takes advantage of the Windows clipboard "Copy" and "Paste" functions to copy data and comments from your MarkBook class files into another software application.

Long before doing this transfer, this teacher set up categories (aka "strands") in MarkBook to match the required three "strands" of the report for English: Reading, Writing, and Oral and Visual Communication. Your educational jurisdiction may not require multiple marks per subject like this one but MarkBook has the capability of generating more than one mark as a category/strand or as a Mark Set for each subject.

To get to this screen, the teacher opened the ERC software (FileMaker® Pro in this example), opened a class, and then opened MarkBook. From MarkBook's main operating screen, she selected Comments and then Transfer Mode. This reduced MarkBook's operating screen to a lower half screen as in this example image. Note that both FileMaker® Pro and MarkBook screens are visible simultaneously.

To move either screen horizontally or vertically, grab the blue bar at the top of the image and drag it to a new location. Shifting the location slightly will give you a better view of the source data (MarkBook) and the target space (FileMaker® Pro).

This teacher used MarkBook to construct comments for Milli well in advance of this transfer. In fact, she created all of the anecdotal comments at home with MarkBook, brought the data to work as MarkBook class folders on a diskette, and used a school computer with FileMaker and MarkBook both installed.

To enter Milli's current percentages in the FileMaker® Pro electronic report screen, she located MarkBook's calculations just below Milli's name to the right side of the MarkBook screen, clicked on the appropriate FileMaker® cells and typed in 72, 82, and 55. In this case, FileMaker® Pro fills in the average, "Ave", automatically, and this average updates as each student's mark is added.

To transfer the assembled comment to FileMaker®, she clicked the Copy button, moved the cursor to the Strengths/Weaknesses/Next Steps white window, and used the paste function of Windows (Ctrl-V) to drop the entire comment into FileMaker®. If the comments were built in advance, this transfer process reduces the report card data entry time by more than 90%! Furthermore, the data is safe in MarkBook's files. If the ERC drops the data after this transfer, repeating this transfer process will take much less time compared to typing everything into the ERC again.

The Fits? button determines if your comment will fit inside the space afforded in the receiving screen (FileMaker® in this example) provided that you have previously identified to MarkBook how big a space is available. MarkBook comes with a set of default fits and you can update these as necessary to define the available space in any receiving software. See section 10-7 for details.

The Scan button checks all students in this class to ensure that each one has a comment and to confirm that each assembled comment will fit the anticipated space in FileMaker® (as an example). A dialogue box will open advising you of any deficiencies.

When finished all transfers for this class, save your newly created file in the ERC software.

"FileMaker" is a registered trademark of Claris Corporation.

Manual: Go to section 11-1 to see how to create an electronic text file export.